USES OF SIGNIFICANT

FIGURES AND
STANDARD FORM IN
OUR DAILY LIFE
GROUP MEMBERS : DANUSHA
ARYANA ILLIYANA
2015
 SIGNIFICANT FIGURES
 Often our Calculator gives us very long answers which
need to be rounded off to have a smaller number of
“Significant Figures”.
 For example, if we measure the Height of all the
students in our class, and use a calculator to get an
average, we might get an answer like 172.3421 cm.
 If we record this long answer as our average, then it
impels we measured the students’ heights to an
accuracy of 4 decimal places.
 There is no way we are allowed to claim this level of
accuracy
 We probably measured the heights with a ruler or a
tape measure, and they are only accurate to the
nearest whole number.
 Our final answer for the Average Height needs to be
written as 172cm, not 172.3421 .
 Significant Figures are used a lot in Science,
Economics, Statistics, Finance, and many other areas
of life where we are measuring things to a certain
level of accuracy.
 STANDARD FORM

If you work in a technical occupation and deal with particles that are very
small that are used in semiconductors they would often be expressed as 10
to some plus or minus number. 

If you worked in a bank and had to count large bills and accounts it could be
1 x 10^6 for every million dollars in the vault for example. 

If you worked in the medical profession and had to deal with contamination
of a virus or finding the purity of water with so many parts per million. The
reduction and use of powers of 10 would be convenient. Instead of hitting the
zero button on your calculator many times with pencil or finger the power
calculation would definitely save time. 

Especially if you went into outer space and had to count stars. 
Or make estimates of particle infiltration in the breathing mechanisms in use.
 These include examples that in real life, the number is very very large or
small. Often it is not practical or available to store so many digits and a
short and approximated value is more suited.

An example of this is with microcomputer chip storage. During a program

instead of using up memory spaces with a unreasonable amount of bits the
microprocessor will use standard form in order to save space and time
during processing.

An abstract way of using standard form in real life could be as follows.

Instead of saying I am 1,828.80 millimeters tall you use a more standard
form of 6 feet. 6 feet really is about 6 x 10^4. Using different units is an
abstract way to do this. In mathematics the example can be translated at
kilometer = 1x10^ -1, meter = 1x10^0, centimeter = 1x10^1, millimeter
= 1x10^2.....
Units translate large/small numbers to a more standard form.